Tuesday, April 10, 2007

grossed out by HDTV shopping

After much careful deliberation and research, I thought I had picked out my new HDTV by Monday. I went to J&R on Monday night to take one last look at it before dropping $2000 on the most expensive television I would ever own. When I walked into the video section of the store, it was after 6 PM, and they were showing the local NBC news on all the screens. The studio broadcast is in HD, but the street footage is not, so it was hard to tell how good the picture quality was on any given TV. Another customer asked a sales rep to change the channel to an HD channel, so he switched it to Discovery HD. The program was a reenactment of three mountain climbers stranded on some God-forsaken frozen peak, with frostbite freezing one guy's face to the point where he looked like he'd been in a fight with Mike Tyson. Another guy tried to go for help, but he fell and slid several hundred feet, breaking both his legs in the process. Discovery HD was generous with the HD footage of this guy's broken legs, one of which was broken in 12(!) places, with blood oozing from the wound, bone sticking out, and the poor man screaming in excruciating pain. Watching him try to walk with a splint nearly made me vomit. Eventually the rescue teams found these climbers, and they all survived, albeit without all the fingers, toes, and limbs they took up the mountain. The name of this program was something like "I Should Have Died Up There," but Discovery could also have called it "Don't Eat While You Watch This" or "Seeing Severe Frostbite and Multiple Fractures in HD Will Cause You To Lose An Entire Night of Sleep."

As for the TV I'd picked out, I decided it was too large for my living room and started looking at smaller sets. And I'd had enough of Discovery HD's nauseating programming, so I went to a Circuit City near my apartment and watched movie and TV clips on their TVs. I settled on a 42-inch Sharp TV, so now it's just a matter of paperwork and scheduling.

I don't think I'll be watching much of the Discovery Channel on my new TV.